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Tara Clark, at Casco Bay High School in Portland, has raised funds for people in Sudan and researched land mine usage.

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TARA CLARK

SCHOOL: Casco Bay High School, Portland

"Silence is always the voice of complicity."

Tara Clark mispronounced Darfur the first time she said it.

She was playing a Sudanese journalist at a model United Nations conference three years ago. Clark was surprised to learn that Darfur is a war-torn region of Sudan.

"I was embarrassed," Clark recalled. "I was a freshman. I didn't know anything."

Clark, who graduated from Casco Bay High School in Portland on June 4, has more than made up for her freshman ignorance.

She organized a school dance during her sophomore year that raised $500 to help the victims of genocide in Darfur. For her junior public policy project, she researched the manufacture and use of land mines, and produced a slide show she presented to her classmates and academic professionals.

Clark helped a friend organize a benefit concert for Sudan, and she joined her classmates on their "junior journey" to West Virginia to help build homes for Habitat for Humanity. She was struck by the contrast of rural beauty and extreme poverty. "To see that in my own country, it was really startling," she said.

Clark follows international events closely and writes about them on her Facebook page. She presses friends to pay attention.

"She embodies what's great about youthful idealism," said Casco Bay Principal Derek Pierce. "It has shaped what she wants to do with her life."

Clark plans to study creative writing and secondary education at the University of Maine at Farmington, then join the Peace Corps. She wants to teach English in a developing nation, probably Cambodia, where land mines continue to kill and maim.

She works part-time at a nursing home and hopes to volunteer this summer at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Portland, where she recently saw people protesting abortion rights. "Silence is always the voice of complicity," she said.

Clark said she's glad her mother, Charlotte Mastropasqua, a teacher, forced her to attend the expeditionary high school in its first year. "She thought it would be good for me, and she was right," Clark said.

Clark has participated in three model U.N. conferences since her freshman year, serving as a delegate for Sri Lanka, Mozambique and Niger. But she'll never forget the first one.

"That really opened my eyes to the world," she said.

Staff Writer Kelley Bouchard can be contacted at 791-6328 or at:

kbouchard@pressherald.com